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Some Technical Aspects of Internet

Geneva, February 2005
Richard Hill
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau
International Telecommunication Union

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Outline
• Networks and standards
• Layers and transport modes
• Intelligence and routing
• Other aspects, in particular name resolution
• Policy issues

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Networks (1/3)

Users Networks Applications

Access line

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Networks (2/3)
Point to point

Multiplexing

Bus

Ring Not all topologies can be

used with all technologies

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Networks (3/3)

Hub and spoke

Broadcast

Not all topologies can be

used with all technologies
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Standards and ITU-T positioning
Intergovernment NGOs
ISO,IEC,
Task Force ITU-T
IEEE, ETSI, ECMA
IETF TTC, Committee T1,
ARIB, TIA, SCTE
Forums & Consortia
1394TA 3GPP 3GPP2 AIM AMF AMI-C
AOEMA AOW ATMF BINTERMS Bluetooth Cable Modems
CBOP CDG CIF CII CommerceNet CommerceNet J
COS CTFJ DHF DISA DOPG DSLF
ECE ECHONET ECOM ECTF EDIFICE EEMA
EIDX EMA EMF ERTICO EWOS FCIA
FCIA-J FIPA FRF FSAN GSM Assoc. HNF
Home API HomePNA HRFWG IDB Forum IFIP IFSA
IMTC IMWA IrDA ITS America ITS UK JAVA
JCTEA JECALS JEDIC JEMA JICSAP JIMM
JMF LONMARK MCPC MDG.org MITF MMCF
Mobile Web MOPA MPLSF MSForum MWIF OASIS
ODVA OIF OMG OSGi PCCA PCISIG
PCMCIA PHS MoU PICMG POF Salutation SCF
SDR SSIPG STA TINA-C TMForum TOG
TSC UMTS USBIF UWCC W3C WAP
WDF Web 3D WfMC WIN Forum WLIF XTP Forum

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How does ITU-T Develop Recommendations?
• Consensus of Sector Members and Member
States
• Work typically driven by Sector Members
• Open (for members), transparent, bottoms-up
process
• Sensitive to national sovereignty: will only cover
matters not considered to be national
• Will not impose contractual terms or operating
rules on private companies
Recommendations are not binding, but tend to be followed because
they represent a true consensus.
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What is ITU’s Situation (1/2)
• ITU-T is a dynamic, well-respected industry-
government partnership (650 Sector Members)
• Examples of ITU-T Recommendations:
– G.723.1 & G.729 - Speech coding for Voice over IP and other
applications
– H.323 - Packet based multimedia communication systems -
the protocols behind Voice over IP, along with:
• H.245 - Control protocol for multimedia communications
• H.248 - Gateway control protocol (developed jointly with IETF)
– X.509 - Public-key encryption
– V.90 - 56kbit/s PSTN modems - providing ubiquitous
worldwide internet access
– G.99x series - xDSL Recommendations for broadband access
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 What is ITU’s Situation (1/2) TSB
ITU-T Approval and publication times
before 1988 1989-1993 1993-1996 1997-2000 2001-2004

Approval 4 years 2 years 18 months 9 months 2-9

time (exceptional months
case:
5 months)

Publication 2-4 years 2 years 1-1.5 year 6-12 3-9 months

time months

Notes: 1. Pre-published Recommendations, available on ITU-T Website, from a few days

to four weeks after approval of the text.

2. Recs in force, pre-published, superseded/obsolete: available on ITU-T Website.

3. Forms of publication: paper, CD-ROM, electronic bookshop, online, etc.

4. FREE ONLINE ACCESS SINCE JANUARY 2001 (one free access per member,
3 free downloads for public)

5. “Approval time” counted between “determination/consent” and final approval

Majority of Recommendations approved in less than 2 months 9

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Layers (simplified)
• ADSL, ISDN, Cable modem, modem (ITU, forums)
! Last mile
• ATM, Fiber, etc (ITU, forums)
! backbone
• TCP/IP (IETF)
! Transport
• SMTP (IETF)
! Application (E-Mail)
• HTTP/HTML (W3C)
! Application (WWW)
See http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ip/index.phtml
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Transport modes
• Connection-oriented circuit switched
!Telephone (ITU)
• Connection-oriented packet switched
!Data communication, e.g X.25 (ITU, others)
• Connectionless packet switched
!TCP/IP (IETF, ITU, others)

MPLS overlays connection-oriented on connectionless

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Intelligence
• None until circa 1965 (advent of small
computers)
• Then question: where to put the
intelligence?
!Only in center (at hubs): SS7
!Only at edges (at terminals): Internet
Neither model is pure:
GSM has considerable intelligence in terminals
Internet has centralized DNS, proxies, routing, …
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Routing
• Static for most networks
!Manual reconfiguration if problems
• Dynamic for Internet
!Robust, self-correcting

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End-to-end
• All networks are end to end
• But in Internet, corollary of intelligence at edge is for
center to do nothing except pass information
unchanged end to end
! RFC 3869:"global addressability of hosts, end-to-end
transparency of packet forwarding".
• This ideal is not always achieved:
! Firewalls
! Network address translation (NAT)
! Dynamic IP address allocation
! proxies

Firewalls are needed whenever the edges cannot be trusted, which

is always in public networks
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Tarifs
• Traditionally depended on:
– Size of message/time used to transmit
– Distance
– Crossing national boundaries
• Not the case, in general, for Internet
• Half-line costs and interconnect issues
(ITU-T Study Group 3)

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What are Names and Addresses

ITU distinguishes names and address. Some
relevant ITU definitions are:
• Name: A combination of characters and is
used to identify end users (E.191).
• Address: A string or combination of digits
and symbols which identifies the specific
termination points of a connection and is used
for routing (E.191).

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Naming and addressing
Internet Telephony (fixed or mobile)
• Domain name ! Telephone number
• IP Address ! SANC/IMSI
• DNS ! SS7
• Root servers ! No equivalent

For a brief summary, with references to more details,

see PP 02 Information Document 6 at:
http://www.itu.int/md/meetingdoc.asp?type=sitems&lang=e&parent=S02-PP-INF-0006

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Name allocation
• Traditionally done:
– By ITU at international level
– By national authority at national level
• For Internet:
– Since 1998, by ICANN at international level
– By ccTLD operators at national level
• Some historical issues persist

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Address allocation
• Traditionally done:
– By ITU at international level
– By national authority at national level
• For Internet:
– By Regional Internet Registries at international level
– By Internet Service Providers at national level
• Historical imbalance in IPv4 address allocation

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Mapping Names to Addresses
Internet Telephony (fixed or mobile)
DNS SS7
• Logically hierarchical WW ! Logically hierarchical WW
• Physically hierarchical WW ! Physical hierarchy depends
on network operators
• Single authoritative ! No single authoritative
operational root operational root

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DNS Name Resolution

• Name resolution is the process by which resolvers
and name servers cooperate to find data in the
name space
• To find information anywhere in the name space,
a name server only needs the names and IP
addresses of the name servers for the root zone
(the “root name servers”)
– The root name servers know about the top-level zones
and can tell name servers whom to contact for all TLDs

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DNS Name Resolution

• A DNS query has three parameters:
– A domain name (e.g., www.nominum.com),
• Remember, every node has a domain name!
– A class (e.g., IN), and
– A type (e.g., A)
• A name server receiving a query from a resolver
looks for the answer in its authoritative data and
its cache
– If the server isn’t authoritative for the answer and the
answer isn’t in the cache, the answer must be looked up

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DNS Resolution Process

• Let’s look at the resolution process step-by-
step:

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The workstation annie asks its configured name
server, dakota, for www.nominum.com’s address

dakota.west.sprockets.com

What’s the IP address

of
www.nominum.com?

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The name server dakota asks a root name server, m, for
www.nominum.com’s address

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

What’s the IP address

of
www.nominum.com?

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The root server m refers dakota to the com name servers
• This type of response is called a “referral”

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com Here’s a list of the
com name servers.
Ask one of them.

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The name server dakota asks a com name server, f,
for www.nominum.com’s address
What’s the IP address
of
www.nominum.com?

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

f.gtld-servers.net

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The com name server f refers dakota to the
nominum.com name servers
Here’s a list of the
nominum.com
name servers.
Ask one of them.
m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

f.gtld-servers.net

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The name server dakota asks an nominum.com name
server, ns1.sanjose, for www.nominum.com’s address
What’s the IP address
of
www.nominum.com?

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

ns1.sanjose.nominum.net

f.gtld-servers.net

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The nominum.com name server ns1.sanjose
responds with www.nominum.com’s address

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

Here’s the IP ns1.sanjose.nominum.net

address for
www.nominum.com
f.gtld-servers.net

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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DNS Resolution Process

• The name server dakota responds to annie with
www.nominum.com’s address
Here’s the IP
address for
www.nominum.com

m.root-servers.net
dakota.west.sprockets.com

ns1.sanjose.nominum.net

f.gtld-servers.net

annie.west.sprockets.com
ping www.nominum.com.

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SS7 Resolution process

• Conceptually similar in principle
– Volume larger (circa 2B devices, vs 700M)
• Details differ
– SS7 can transmit many types of messages,
including text (SMS)
• Top-level servers not necessarily
synchronized
• Each operator makes arrangements to
access some SS7 provider

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 Security Basics TSB
Ref: E.408, X.800, X.805

Threats Services Techniques

Loss of service Availability Many
Disclosure of Confidentiality Encryption
information
Unauthorized Authentication PKI (X.509)
access Known content
Fraud Integrity PKI, Notary
Confirmation of Return message
delivery
… … …
For more information: http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/85097.html 33
 Security Hot Issues TSB
• Telephone number misuse
!Rogue dialers
• SPAM (see http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/spam/index.phtml )
!E-Mail is not authenticated
!Cost to send is very low
• Denial of Internet service
!Packets are not authenticated
!Cost to send is very low
• Viruses, worms
!Not authenticated
!No integrity 34
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Policy issues (1/4)
Generic issue Example for roads
• Universal access ! 30 min. from highway
• Legal Intercept/Privacy ! Roadblocks, search laws
• Emergency services ! Emergency lane, sirens
• Allocation of scare ! Parking space
resources
• Interconnection pricing ! Tolls for highways
• Consistent use of names ! License plates, road
and addresses numbers
• Minimum/guaranteed ! Safety standards/laws
quality of service
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Policy issues (2/4)
Generic issue Example for roads
• Access for disabled ! Wheelchair ramps, audible
traffic lights
• Directories ! Registry of motor vehicles
• Control of dominant ! Imposed highway price
players (national matter)
• Consumer protection ! Driving laws, vehicle
(national matter) safety laws
• Content control (national ! Dangerous goods transport
matter, not ITU)
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Policy issues (3/4)

• Question is:
– Who sets policies?
– By what methods?
• At:
– National level
– International level
• And:
– Similar rules for similar services, or
– Technology-specific rules?
(see http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/conreg/index.html )

More generally see: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/special-projects/ip-policy/index.html

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Policy issues (4/4)

• Saying “Technology X should be Y (e.g. free)” is merely
one particular choice of policies
– e.g. there should be no customs barriers or tolls on roads; or no
universal access provision; or legal intercept
• Saying “Technology X should not be subject to national
policy Y (e.g. excise tax)” is also merely one particular
choice of policies
– e.g. there should be no national control of certain aspects, for
example national revenue collection for certain uses of the
technology

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